"Hamas in Jerusalem"
Arlene from Israel
July 28, 2008
"Hamas in Jerusalem"
Yuval Diskin, head of Shin Bet, provided a report for the Cabinet yesterday.
Some Jerusalem neighborhoods, he told them, were becoming hotbeds of Hamas activity and a serious security problem. The neighborhoods of Abu Dis and Azariya were mentioned in particular, as was Shuafat.
Now, if I live to be 120 I will not understand everything that is taking place. All I can do is report on it. Seems the neighborhoods that are considered most problematic are on the "other side" of the security fence. That is, the fence, designed to keep out terrorists from Israel proper, is not contiguous at every single point with the municipal border -- while in some places the fence extends beyond the municipal border, here and there the municipal boundary extends beyond the fence. The IDF apparently does not operate in these areas, which are not part of Judea and Samaria, but rather -- as part of the municipality -- part of Israel proper. But the Jerusalem police don't go often to the other side of the fence. And so there is less law enforcement or deterrence activity in these areas than is the case in Judea and Samaria -- a security vacuum.
(I hasten to mention, however, that the Arab neighborhoods from which the two tractor terrorists hailed -- Umm Tuba and Sur Bahir, as well as the neighborhood of the Rav Kook yeshiva terrorist -- Jebl Mukabir -- are all inside the fence, as is Shuafat, so I am further confused.)
Prime Mentalist's Psychiatric Questions Go Mainstream... Prime Mentalist Forgets He's On Holiday...
Guido Fawkes
Prime Mentalist's Psychiatric Questions Go Mainstream
Is Bruce Anderson the first mainstream pundit to question Gordon's psychiatric state? Here he is in the Indy this morning:
The stories are seeping out from No. 10. The other day, Gordon Brown was convinced that Dominic Grieve, the shadow Home Secretary, had made such a strong attack on 42-day detention as to impugn his commitment to national security. Although Downing Street advisers trawled and Googled, they could not find the quote. Their boss expressed gratitude for their efforts in the way that a sergeant-major would thank a recruit for a speck of dust on his rifle. Mr Brown then stationed himself at a terminal. For the next four hours, he sat there unavailingly, emanating gloom and rage. The non-psychiatric interpretation of his behaviour is termed "the playing politics with national security syndrome".
Shortly afterwards, John Prescott was in No. 10, showing around some children. "What's he doing in this building?" exploded Mr Brown. "Get him out of here." (He surely cannot regard Mr Prescott as a potential leadership challenger – otherwise, things are truly desperate).
Embarrassed aides explained that, you know, Mr Prescott had been Deputy Prime Minister until last year, and what harm could there be in showing kids around? Gordon Brown's response was to shut himself in the Cabinet Room for the next two hours, talking to no-one.
Iran Plays for Time.
China Confidential
Foreign Reporting and Analysis Since April 2005
Monday, July 28, 2008
Iran Plays for Time
Foreign Confidential....
Iranian maniac-in-chef Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told NBC TV Monday that if the United States adopted a genuinely new approach to his country Tehran would respond in a positive way.
"Today, we see new behavior shown by the United States and the officials of the United States. My question is, is such behavior rooted in a new approach?" Ahmadinejad said.
His remarks followed an unprecedented meeting between Under Secretary of State William Burns and Iran's chief negotiator at talks in Geneva over Iran's uranium enrichment program, which is clearly aimed at developing atomic arms.
The Iranian Islamists are masters of deceit and deception. Successive US administrations have been tricked and fooled into believing that the monstrous mullahocracy is meaningfully divided between hardliners and moderates. In fact, the regime is an implacable foe bent on destroying Israel and dominating the Middle East; the internal divisions are no more meaningful than the internal differences between factions of Germany's Nazi party during World War II.
Meanwhile, Russia and China are showing signs of distancing themselves from Iran on the nuclear issue. A nuclear-armed Islamist regime in Tehran is neither in Moscow's interest nor China's interest.
US Banks Going Straight to Hell on $1.5trillion Eventual Loss. Companies / Credit Crisis 2008.
US Banks Going Straight to Hell on $1.5trillion Eventual Loss
Companies / Credit Crisis 2008
Jul 27, 2008 - 08:40 PM
By: Alex_Wallenwein
http://marketoracle.co.uk/Article5646.html
NAB, National Australia Bank, was just forced to write down over ninety percent of its exposure to US mortgages via so-called SIV's or conduits last Friday, to the order of $830 million dollars. This was by no means a matter of choice for NAB. The bank had just issued and sold $850 million worth of new debt paper. Buyers of that debt are now screaming bloody murder. They are asking why this information, which surely must have been known to the bank at the time of the debt sale, was not disclosed to the market beforehand. They are now demanding their money back or some other way to back out of the deal.
Yet, what happened to this single Australian bank is nothing compared to what will happen to US equity and bond markets when they wake up on Monday morning, July 28, 2008. Robert Gottliebsen of The Business Spectator, an Australian financial news and analysis portal, wrote a commentary pointing to the possible consequences of NAB's write-down.
The Ugly Truth
The low-down on this write-down: According to Gottliebsen, after having written down $450 billion of mortgage loan related assets since last year, US banks will have to take an additional hit of a whopping trillion buckos if the system as a whole wants to come clean, the way NAB just did.
THE CASE FOR HANGING ERRANT PUBLIC OFFICIALS
THE CASE FOR HANGING ERRANT PUBLIC OFFICIALS
By: Devvy
July 28, 2008
© 2008 - NewsWithViews.com
Relax, Comrade Chertoff. The Case for Hanging Errant Public Officials is the title of a book by James Farrell who also wrote, The Judas Syndrome. The Case for Hanging Errant Public Officials was published in 1988, decades before a Nazi law called the 'The Patriot Act' was rammed down our throats. Today, only rich kids of famous people are allowed to exercise their First Amendment rights; see Indict Michael Reagan, Applaud Senator Karen Johnson. This talk radio gas bag got away with soliciting murder over the public airwaves because his father was Ronald Reagan. He was given a pass under "political hyperbole." Yours truly would already be in jail.
The title of Farrell's little book is what a lot of Americans are thinking today about the U.S. Congress and their state legislatures. After almost two decades in the trenches full time, few things shock me coming out of Washington, DC, but recently a comment from U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell, [D-WA] caused me to think of Farrell's excellent little book. (Did I commit a thought crime?) What did this pusillanimous mush head say?
Why Democrats don't want to lower gas prices
Senator lets cat out of the bag on Bloomberg TV show
"July 22, 2008. In an interview with Bloomberg TV's "Money and Politics" last night, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., explained Democrats don't want to increase supplies of oil and gasoline because they want to wean Americans off of petroleum products."
Secrets & Lies.
Secrets & Lies
Jim Kirwan
7-28-8
So, what is it with 'Secrets' that makes them so irresistible to the Darkside and how exactly were secrets & lies used to first steal and then privatize virtually this entire society.
One of the basic parameters for creating an entirely new constitution for the United States was to free the people of this new nation from the stench of the darkest secrets & lies of old world Europe. This was a major reason why so many fled their native lands to come to America for a new start not just economically, but for the freedom of opportunity that was 'promised.' by a government that actually was not tyrannical but enabling on many fronts for ordinary people. That was then: but that idea was viciously & systematically murdered a long time ago by the income streams created by privatization with massive help from 'Secret' everything!
Secrets & Lies have largely escaped notice in Occupied America, as there are currently so many other things that threaten every aspect of our lives! The owners of this place use Secrets & Lies in such a myriad of ways that to understand the nature of this side of our public and private lives is to begin to come to grips with "how we've all been had"!
A politically-induced crisis.
EU Referendum
Monday, July 28, 2008
A politically-induced crisis
After the recent eye-watering increases in gas (and electricity) prices, The Economist is telling us that the situation is going to get even worse.
Britain's gas market, it says, is changing fundamentally in ways that make it much more vulnerable to higher gas prices. As domestic supplies dwindle, Britain must make up the shortfall from overseas, either through pipelines from Europe or by buying shipfuls of liquefied natural gas (LNG) on the global market. Currently, North Sea production can supply around two-thirds of Britain's maximum demand; that will fall to around half as soon as 2010.
Expensive gas is particularly painful for Britain, which relies on the stuff to heat around 85 percent of its homes. The country also uses gas to generate around 40 percent of its electricity, a particularly high proportion that is set to rise still further over the next decade.
The reason cited for this is the closure by 2023 of all but one of Britain's "doddery nuclear plants" and new environmental laws (aka the EU's large combustion plants directive – although The Economist does not state this) which "could mean that up to half of coal stations will have to shut down over the coming years."
The magazine then tells us that, "On current plans much of that capacity will be replaced by cheap, quick-to-build gas plants, boosting demand and making Britain even more reliant on flaky supplies from the international markets."
The Dead Cat Bounce.
Financial Up Date
daily reckoning
The Dead Cat Bounce
Ouzilly, France
Monday, July 28, 2008
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*** The boom in finance is over – but that doesn't mean there won't be some spectacular bounces…leveraged stupidity…
*** Sell risk, buy caution…has the black goo topped out?...the return of the rails…
*** Give the mobs bread and circuses…insights from the Agora Financial Investment Symposium…and more!
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Readers unfamiliar with modern macro-monetary theory would probably like to stay that way. But that doesn't stop us from limbering up in order to pitch the system at you.
Last November, Wachovia Bank of the Tar Heel State was worth more than $100 billion. Two weeks ago, it was worth $20 billion – after confessing a loss of more than $8 billion in the second quarter. Buy yo ho...last week it was back up to $37 billion.
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